Run: 2026-02-20-01KHYAYYJMC1ZTHAGA5XXJR3RC

The tunnel’s damp breath curled around Harlow’s ankles as she descended the crumbled concrete stairs of the abandoned Camden Tube station, her salt-and-pepper crop catching the flicker of her headlamp. At 5’9”, she towered over the rusted turnstile that marked the Veil Market’s entry, and she fished a weathered raven’s talon from her coat pocket—her bone token, plucked from a busted enforcer six months prior—and pressed it into the metal. The turnstile groaned, a secret door swinging open to reveal the market’s current husk: stalls stripped of enchanted trinkets, banned alchemical vials shattered on the platform, the air thick with burnt sage (a sign of imminent relocation—full moon was tomorrow, per its unyielding schedule). Her worn leather watch ticked against her left wrist, 3:17 a.m., and she set her sharp jaw, military precision coiling in her shoulders; this was the third supernatural-related death in as many weeks, and the clique she’d shadowed for months was supposed to be tied to it. Harlow’s brown eyes narrowed as she stepped over a shard of fading enchanted glass, her 18 years of Metropolitan Police service humming in her bones. The crime scene was roped off at the platform’s far end, a Shade artisan’s stall huddled between discarded bone amulets and crated banned grimoires. She knelt beside the body: a gaunt figure slumped over a splintered workbench, throat slit with a blade that left a faint iridescent residue—trace of a banned alchemical solvent sold only here. The rookie forensics tech she’d brought along, a kid who still flinched at supernatural evidence, handed her a report. “No signs of struggle, Detective. Stall’s locked from the inside, but the window’s gone—no prints, no fiber evidence.” That didn’t add up. The Veil Market’s enforcers patrolled every corridor during relocation, their senses tuned to even the faintest flicker of violence. They would have intervened before the killer could escape. Yet their post by the turnstile was empty save for a crumpled note scrawled with the clique’s twisted raven’s wing symbol. Harlow’s mind flashed to DS Morris three years prior: his body found in a similar abandoned transit hub, his throat marked with the same iridescent residue, no explanation for how the killer had vanished. She’d never understood the supernatural threads back then; now, she chased them like a dog after a fox. A soft scuff from the tunnel made her stand, hand drifting to her sidearm. Eva Kowalski emerged, 5’4” and dwarfed by Harlow’s frame, her curly red hair tumbling over round glasses, a worn leather satchel full of books slung over one shoulder. The freckles across her nose stood out against her flushed complexion—she’d run from the British Museum’s restricted archives, where she worked as a research assistant, after Harlow’s urgent call. She tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear (her nervous habit, one Harlow had noted during their first meeting, when Eva had babbled about Oxford’s Ancient History master’s program) and gestured to the satchel. “You said the victim was a Shade artisan. I brought my thesis on their craft—they’re the only ones who make Veil Compasses.” Harlow nodded, leading her to the workbench. Eva’s green eyes widened behind her glasses as she pulled a thick leather-bound book from her satchel, its pages marked with neon post-its, and flipped to a section of illustrations: small brass compasses with faces etched with protective sigils, their casings coated in a dull green verdigris. “Shade artisans infuse each with shadow energy,” she said, tapping an illustration of a compass carved with the same creator’s mark as the indentation on the workbench. “They point to the nearest supernatural rift—portals that let you vanish in seconds. This artisan made Veil Compasses. But his is missing.” Harlow’s headlamp caught something Eva had missed: a tiny smudge of verdigris on the workbench’s edge, tucked beneath a splinter of wood. She ran a gloved finger over it, her brown eyes narrowing, military precision cutting through the fog of her frustration. “The rookie said the window was gone,” she said, sharp. “But the enforcers would have heard the break. Unless the killer didn’t break it—they used a rift.” Eva tucked another strand of hair behind her left ear, her freckled cheeks flushing with urgency. “But rifts can’t be opened on market grounds without triggering the enforcers’ ward network. The market’s rules are non-negotiable—violence gets you dragged to the shadow pits.” “Unless the wards were tampered with,” Harlow cut in, gesturing to the stall’s wooden frame. A faint scratch scored one of its embedded protective sigils, the wood splintered just enough to weaken the ward’s hold. “The killer used the Veil Compass to locate a tiny rift, slit the artisan’s throat, grabbed the compass, and vanished before the enforcers could pick up the violence’s echo. The clique’s note is a false trail—too obvious. The killer knows the market’s full-moon relocation schedule means enforcers are stretched thin, and they know the artisan’s craft well enough to tamper with his personal wards.” Eva flipped through her book, stopping at a page dog-eared with a British Museum archive receipt. “Enforcers leave their posts an hour before full moon to help move the market’s most valuable goods,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s when the killer struck. They couldn’t have used any other compass—this artisan’s were attuned exclusively to the rifts beneath Camden’s transit hubs. No one else would have access to that kind of precision.” Harlow’s mind raced back to Morris’s case: he’d been investigating the same clique, following a trail of stolen Veil Compasses, when he’d been found dead. She’d dismissed the supernatural hints back then, clinging to her by-the-book police work, but now she saw the pattern. The clique was a decoy. The real killer was someone who’d been using Veil Compasses to open rifts and commit untraceable violence, eliminating the Shade artisans who could link them to the tools. She crushed the clique’s note in her gloved hand, the paper crinkling like a dying leaf. “Morris’s killer used the same trick,” she said, her voice low and tight. “He didn’t understand the rifts—he thought it was just a gang war. I’m not making that mistake.” Eva pulled a spiral notebook from her satchel, its pages filled with scribbled notes from the restricted archives’ occult texts. “This artisan was the last of his kind,” she said, tapping a line about Shade artisans being hunted for their compass-making skills. “Whoever took his Veil Compass has the only one attuned to Camden’s rifts. They’ll use it to relocate their operations before the full moon rises—by then, the market will be gone, and all evidence will be buried with it.” Harlow checked her worn leather watch again—3:42 a.m., two hours until the full moon. She stared at the verdigris smudge, then at the faint residual glow of the rift (a sight she’d only learned to see after weeks of pestering Eva for occult crash courses), and felt a spark of clarity she hadn’t felt in three years. The evidence had been right in front of her all along: the supernatural threads she’d refused to confront, the false trails meant to distract her, the Veil Compass that held the key to every death. She turned to the rookie forensics tech. “Bag that verdigris smudge. Test it against the compass illustrations in Eva’s book—we need a confirmed energy signature.” Eva’s nervousness faded into determination as she pulled a laptop from her satchel, its hard drive loaded with restricted British Museum rift-trajectory files. “The Veil Compass’s needle points to the nearest active rift,” she said, typing quickly. “If we can map the smudge’s energy signature, we can trace where the killer opened the rift—and where they’re heading next.” Harlow stared at the workbench, Morris’s final words—“There’s something we’re missing, Harlow. Something we can’t see”—ringing in her ears. She’d found the missing thread. She’d finally understand what happened to Morris. And she’d take down whoever was using the Veil Market’s secrets to play god, even if it meant diving headfirst into the supernatural world she’d spent three years trying to ignore. Her military precision coiled tighter, her sharp jaw set, and she grabbed her headlamp, already moving toward the rift’s faint glow. “Let’s go,” she said. “We’ve got a compass to track.”